Transcript
Speaker: No, and that's what makes it interesting, for sure. Fish eyes and dragon eyes, like really? That dragon eyes, I completely lost it. It's like, oh sure. Yeah. I can just imagine like the ladies in their manor houses. Dragon eyes, is that quite a dragon eye point? Is that a dragon? Yeah.
Speaker: Welcome back to the Modern Lady podcast. You're listening to episode 49. Hi, I'm Michelle. And I'm Lindsay, and today it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. The recent practice taken up by so many to live liturgically and to incorporate the life of the church into their domestic churches has resulted in intention and faith in our homes and communities.
Speaker: But what is required and what is free to be creative? Sometimes it's hard to know when we need to dig deeper and when it's okay to figure out what works best for you. And the season of Advent is a prime example of liturgical living that has some of us thrown for a bit of a loop.
Speaker: But first, Michelle and I love bringing the Modern Lady podcast to you for free each and every week. We spend a lot of time researching and editing each episode, and all we ask in return is that if you enjoy today's show, that you share it, and if you can, take a minute to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. Every time we get a new review, it helps our little podcast become more visible. And also, every time we get a new review, Michelle and I message each other and get super excited.
Speaker: This week's shout out goes to Mary Kate Vertifoy who reviewed us on Apple Podcasts and said, quote, I am absolutely loving this podcast. I became an active listener when Michelle and Lindsay started the show from the very beginning. Between the humor, great advice and overall joy of the show, I'm hooked. I'd be lying if I said I haven't taken notes before on certain subjects.
Speaker: I highly recommend this podcast to anyone, Catholic or not, who's looking for a great woman's show." Thank you so much Mary Kate for your comment. It has been wonderful to get to know you throughout this whole journey and we are so grateful for your support for the Modern Lady right from the get -go.
Speaker: And if you would like to leave us a comment, you can do so on our website www .themodernlady1950 .wordpress .com or you can leave us a comment on Facebook or Instagram where you can find us at the Modern Lady Podcast. But before we get into today's chat, Lindsay has our Modern Lady Tip of the Week.
Speaker: Michelle, you and I are both hygge obsessed, and we even did a whole episode on our beloved Swedish mid -afternoon coffee break tradition called fika. But something we've never really discussed is how to make a proper kappa. Now, kappa is a Britishism for cup of tea.
Speaker: According to the website ohousecivilized .com, these are the proper steps to making the perfect cup of tea. Number one, warm the teapot and teacups. Number two, use cold filtered water. Number three, set the correct water temperature. Number four, use one and a half teaspoons per cup of tea. Number five, steep high quality whole leaf tea. And number six, set the timer for the correct amount of brewing time.
Speaker: So we've got to break that down. Now, according to this list, it's important to warm the teapot and cups. And this is so that they don't crack when the hot water is poured into them. This is likely leftover from the days of fine china and colder houses, right? Without heating in them so everything would have been a lot colder and pouring the hot water and could have caused them to crack.
Speaker: Now with regard to using cold filtered water, I was actually shocked to find out that it is always advised to use cold water for cooking and for making coffee and tea. Most of us do that but there's actually a reason why. So it said there's quite a bit of information online about
Speaker: The fact that hot water sits in our hot water tanks and this can actually build up a lot of sediment in the hot water which you can notice a bit more in cooking or is like when you're using water in an as an ingredient in something. And cold water comes fresh from the pipes every time. And as for the filtered water well it just tastes better.
Speaker: So what is the correct water temperature for making tea? Well, the actual process of boiling is important because it brings oxygen into the water, but it's very important that you bring the right amount of oxygen. So are you stressing yet, Michelle?
Speaker: I already haven't followed three out of the three steps to making tea. I hope I never have to make a British person tea. It's going to get a lot more complicated. Oh, wonderful. You could pay attention to the size of the bubbles. Now, bubbles that are the size of fish eyes works well for oolong tea, but you need to wait for bubbles the size of dragon eyes for black tea. What's that I said? Yep, dragon eyes.
Speaker: So if you've never seen a dragon's eye before, perhaps you'd like to use a thermometer. And for white, are you okay? Like you're dying. I'm not breathing, but it's fine. Keep going. So for white and green teas, you want to keep the temp between 170 and 185 degrees Fahrenheit. And for black tea, you're looking at between 208 and 212 degrees.
Speaker: Now, why is high quality whole leaf tea important? Apparently those tea bags that most of us buy are just filled with poor quality odds and ends of tea plants, garbage, pesticides, corn, and so I brought byproducts and plastics that leach into our hot water. So lastly, Michelle, how long should your tea steep?
Speaker: I love a proper cup of thick and strong. And this is what they call builders tea in England, although they have it filled with sugar, which I don't do. So this is already a long tip of the week, and it would be too long if I were to tell you how long you should steep each different kind of tea. So we'll just keep it to your average cup of black tea. And you're going to want that to steep for three to five minutes. And the homemaker in me wants to let you know that you can actually do a pretty decent kitchen tidy up in the five minutes it can take to brew that cup of tea.
Speaker: So Michelle, how are you feeling?
Speaker: like I need a cup of tea. When you're talking about, oh my gosh, what have I been drinking? I use, sometimes I use warm water because I'm impatient and it boils faster if it's just hot. And I'm mixing that with all the pesticides and I don't steep it for three minutes. So it's like weak.
Speaker: contaminated water on my hot water tank. Yeah, I need a stiff cuppa after that one. I feel like I need to give Jason the heads up that this is going to be like when you and I talked about the Korean beauty step routine and I dropped hundreds of dollars on products for research. I'ma have to go drop hundreds of dollars on, I guess, tea now to research this.
Speaker: Oh, but you know what? Winter is long here in Canada. We have a good 10 months of cold weather ahead of us to perfect this craft and truly, obviously, art of making tea. Living out the liturgical year of the church has really picked up in popularity over the last several years. And that's been a really amazing, wonderful thing.
Speaker: But every year, when we encroach upon Advent, something happens to us. And I feel like we can get kind of out of sorts in knowing how to best approach this particular season, right, Lindsay? Yeah, because I think
Speaker: we want to do all of the things because all of the things that all of the old traditions and and devotions that come with Advent are all really awesome and really exciting and you add that on top of already really hectic time of the year and we just fail before we even begin it feels like. But you were mentioning liturgical living and this has really become something that we hear a lot about in the Catholic blogosphere
Speaker: And interestingly enough, I'm hearing about it from my non -Catholic Christian friends who are really wanting to get into this idea of liturgical living. Yeah, I have to admit I've been a lifelong Catholic and I only just recently, like within the last five years or so maybe, have heard about liturgical living in your home and have tried certain things out. And it has largely been the blogging
Speaker: blogging world online that has helped me out with that. So I'm not surprised. And it's such a beautiful way of living your faith in your everyday life. But I can totally see how this appeals to even beyond a Catholic world. Well, it totally does because we all have this desire to go deeper into things, right? And so the whole reason for the season.
Speaker: thing is like us wanting to understand why why we're celebrating Christmas or Easter and so you're right there's a broad appeal for kind of going deeper in and just going below the surface of what we maybe just did growing up and
Speaker: And so apparently in like the large mega churches, several of them in the United States have started taking on kind of a liturgical calendar like we have used in the Catholic Church. And so just to familiarize our listeners, the liturgical year is divided up into Advent, Christmastide, Ordinary Time,
Speaker: Lent Easter and then ordinary time again that one that one comes back twice Right, you know and so if you're listening right now and you think okay like I'm not Catholic this means nothing to me Michelle and I just want to say like hang tight because there's actually a lot of really cool traditions and stuff we're gonna talk about that even non Catholics do around the world and it's just a really exciting time of the year and so we just really want to have this conversation about Advent leading into Christmas and I
Speaker: what the church recommends and what we think we can do just as your regular, you know, tired moms. Yeah, and do you know what I love about the liturgical year too, is that like a good mother, the church paces us, right? And if we did not have the structure of a liturgical year, what to celebrate, when to celebrate it,
Speaker: I feel like, well, that's what we see secularly, right? We just kind of skip everything and we completely tire ourselves out, overextend ourselves, so that when the actual feast comes, we're done. And so I think that is part of the appeal as well, of living in accordance with the church's pace.
Speaker: because as young children we kind of get overly excited sometimes and can rush to the finish line maybe too quickly without adequate preparation. That's so true and that's exactly the case with Advent. So we're called to use these four weeks as a time of preparation for Christmas, right? So while the world starts celebrating Christmas as soon as Thanksgiving is over in the United States,
Speaker: as early as the first week in November in Canada. I don't know if you've seen that but a lot of my friends have their trees up like November 1st. I do want to say if you are in Canada please wait actually until after Remembrance Day on November 11th at least. But having talked to a lot of people this morning about this, I'm talking maybe under a hundred women about this, it does seem like it's a
Speaker: Thanksgiving kind of is a big marker for our American listeners and they tend to wait until because they want to decorate for Thanksgiving, right? So they still want pumpkins out and like that kind of fall stuff and then they usually wait to like the weekend after Thanksgiving. But we already packed that stuff away a month ago here in Canada. So we're itching to get the Christmas stuff out.
Speaker: So like most people, I started to decorate my tree in my home halfway through November, and I used to make sure everything was done by November 28th, which is the birthday of my oldest child. And that started to change a couple years ago when we started attending the traditional Latin Mass. Michelle, when do you guys usually start to decorate?
Speaker: Honestly, we usually do kind of start to decorate closer to the start of Advent and then throughout Advent. And I wish I could say it was for, you know, on principle, but it's actually just because we have a lot of family birthdays in November.
Speaker: So we actually don't just get around to it until more closer to December anyways, but I can see how in Canada it is so tempting to decorate early because we do have a very busy October and then December is Christmas and November for us is just kind of this wasteland month. Yeah, you're right. Of dreariness. It's usually gray and there's nothing to look forward to as opposed to in the States you kind of have like a
Speaker: fall in October, then you look forward to Thanksgiving, and then you look forward to Christmas. It seems a little bit more spread out. Yeah, that totally makes sense. So we started trying to delay our decorating, as I said, once we started attending the traditional Latin Mass back in 2012. And
Speaker: I, nobody really at first came right out and said to me, um, that we really need to wait to decorate until Advent is through. But that impression, like so many of the old devotions that you start to kind of pick up on when you attend the traditional Latin Mass, um, just started to kind of grow within my own consciousness. And then, then I started seeing the online battles of the arguing over
Speaker: how early a tree should be put up. And it is quite the battleground. I don't know if you've seen that quite as much as I have in the traditional Catholic world, but there's a lot of infighting about when you should put your tree up and a lot of judgment.
Speaker: No, I've seen just hints of it. I haven't really gone too far into that whole debate. But I remember, again, being a Catholic my whole life, but being relatively new to liturgical living, I was kind of taken aback at first. I was like, oh, is that even a consideration? I didn't even know that was a thing. I just thought it was a personal preference.
Speaker: And I think that part of that also came from the fact that we mostly use artificial trees now, right? So again, like you're saying, even just the world in her wisdom knew that if we were using real trees, you had to delay it as close to Christmas as possible so that you could keep that tree alive. And so once we started using artificial trees, I mean, that's not a consideration at all anymore. You can put it up at any time.
Speaker: And so, um, we tried in our home and this was me trying to kind of spearhead it. Jason would have that tree up at the end of November. He absolutely loves it. I love it too, but I thought, no, no, no, we need to go deep in Advent. Like we need to go really, really into this, this season of preparation, this penitential season. And that's where I first started kind of hearing the words mini Lent thrown around.
Speaker: And I jumped on that. Now I have since also heard that Minnie Lent isn't quite the right way we should be approaching it either. So I'd heard that that's what we should approach it like, and then I heard we shouldn't approach it like in Minnie Lent. And my mind started spinning and I got all out of control. But like Lent, it is a preparatory time that we do before a massive feast in the church. And also like Lent, we use purple, right, in our liturgical garments and in the altar cloths and that sort of thing.
Speaker: And also like Lent, we should be fasting. We should be going to confession. We should be doing things like cleaning out our homes and our hearts and preparing ourselves for the great joy that's supposed to happen. But Michelle, I went too dark. I went too deep into that the last couple of years and it didn't turn out well.
Speaker: Yeah. And there are a lot of similarities between Advent and Lent down to the colour. And so, yeah, I think it is a case of mixed messages sometimes too. This whole kind of back and forth confusion about what we need to do, what we should have to do, what's up to us. I feel like it's just, you know, it's so much bigger than Advent too. It's for many other things, this idea of
Speaker: know, when do we need to double down and be firm and hold fast to our traditions and what can be freer or more up to interpretation. And sometimes I think we get them mixed up. And when that happens, that's when the stress comes. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And in our culture today, even it seems like so many of the things that we should be standing firm on are
Speaker: becoming more lax. And so we kind of grasp at these other things that maybe don't have as much gravity associated to them.
Speaker: but we're militant about it. And it doesn't flow well. And so we're left a little bit confused and jumbled. And I mean, isn't this why we're Catholic, is that we can just kind of rest on somebody else's authority? There is no official teaching on when you can decorate. And you wouldn't believe that again, if you look in the comment boxes on Catholic groups, because it is like everybody trying to one up each other. You have to like wait until
Speaker: 10 p .m. on Christmas Eve to get that tree up and it better stay up until February 2nd because if you're just an epiphany person that's not long enough you need to go right to Candlemas on February 2nd and so this right and so I was feeling all those things and so the last now three years specifically
Speaker: I delayed it. One year I did wait till Christmas Eve. Now my tree, I have a gorgeous tree. It's my pride and joy. It's my fifth child. It takes me three days to decorate that tree. The children do not participate. I talk openly on social media about that. This is not a family event. This is not about making memories with my kids. It's me going, get away from me as I'm drinking.
Speaker: Just mildly alcoholic drinks. But the thing is, my children, they love this. They know that this is what I do. They've even asked me to come to their homes when they're adults to decorate their trees. So I'm not ruining their lives, people, okay? We have a couple other trees in our house that the kids can be a little more chill on.
Speaker: But our tree, our tree is a work of art. But trying to do that work of art on Christmas Eve doesn't work. It didn't work well. Oh my gosh. And so not only the Christmas Eve time that I did it then, but just when I left it till like Gaudette Sunday or closer to Christmas, my heart didn't have enough time to prepare. And Christmas morning came around and I was like,
Speaker: Like it kind of didn't. Can you add that sound effect in that would sound a lot better? I think you did it great. Yeah. Thanks. It was such a letdown and I know that sounds childish, but it didn't. All of that preparation, all of that stuff, I was expecting this like explosion of joy and I was like, oh,
Speaker: Christmas is here. Yeah. But then you had it until February 2nd. Well, that's the thing. So that's not the same. So we that let's just say to our non -Catholic listeners, then that in the Catholic Church, Christmas starts on December 25th and we are to party hard. Like there's like the 12 days of Christmas and then we can party right up till February 2nd. But like any family with multiple young children, we're pretty much sick that whole month.
Speaker: That's right. And it starts because kids are fantastic. It starts like a day before Christmas that they all start to get like a stomach flu. And then we're vomiting until the feast of the presentation on February 2nd. So those three years I delayed my tree, we didn't get to do the post -Christmas partying. And I was like, this sucks. Forget it. I want my tree back up. So this is why I'm making a public service announcement that this year you will see my tree up in November. It's not up yet.
Speaker: But I don't want messages from my trad friends saying, Lindsay, it's supposed to be close to Christmas. I know that because I've done that. I'm sorry, Michelle, is I'm just I need a second to just tell people that this year I want the warmth and I want the lights and I want my tree up. So this leads into you and I saying, like, free yourselves, people, right? Free yourselves from the burden. There is no church teaching.
Speaker: I was just going to say this. It's like Lindsay's announcement has been sponsored by the Modern Lady podcast. Yes. That was the whole episode right there. Yeah, there you go. Prepare yourselves. Prepare for Christmas, but also prepare Lindsay's tree to be up. Okay. Oh, okay. All right.
Speaker: To add to your point, I agree. I think that Advent is like Lent. I know Kendra Tierney wrote a great article about that at one point. She talks about Advent versus Lent and she puts it into the perspective of penance versus preparation or anticipation, right?
Speaker: So a lot of the things, like you were saying, you go to confession, we have purple. We're meant to fast. We're meant to delay the joy of Christmas until actual Christmas. But the intention is different. And I think that's kind of the hitch, the hinging point is what I'm trying to say.
Speaker: And so you're doing all of this, you're cleaning up your house, you're doing all this to make room for Jesus as opposed to in Lent, you're doing this to join with Jesus in His suffering. And also,
Speaker: to keep in mind too. I know we talk about this in Lent as well but it just hit me a couple of years ago that for Lent and so also for Advent you're supposed to work on these mortifications or penances or preparations throughout the season.
Speaker: Yeah, like for lenses throughout the 40 days for Advent throughout the four weeks and you're not supposed to be ready for it on day one, right? Yeah, yeah, right and and the church gives you so much time for a reason so maybe we can
Speaker: you know, see it for what it is as a time of preparation that's not going to just take one or two days, whether it's at the beginning of Advent or right before Christmas, but something that is meant to be steadily, steadfastly peacefully worked on throughout a specific length of time.
Speaker: Absolutely. If we entered into day one of Advent already spiritually ready and everything was done, God's like, well, there's no work for me here. And that's obviously not part of the plan. And so one of the articles I read on it, the priest was really good at saying that there are some things that are unavoidable. Like we have to wrap presents and there are sometimes really good sales before Christmas, which means we're going to have to do Christmas shopping for our kids. And so we can't avoid the culture as Catholics. We can't
Speaker: necessarily wait until December 25th, right? But as we're doing those things, we can do those things with a different heart and a different intention. And so as you're wrapping the presence, pray for the person you're wrapping the presence for. As you're out shopping, use it as an exercise and growing in holiness. Give up that parking spot, right? Don't be all frantic and running around and crazy. Do it slowly. Do it with
Speaker: peace. Use all of these things as a way to prepare yourself. All of these opportunities leading up to Christmas are things that should help us grow in virtue and grow in holiness as we approach the baby Jesus, the birth of the baby Jesus.
Speaker: There's a mom in one of the Catholic groups I'm in while I was having this discussion this morning. And she really helped me understand this idea of not being so extreme because I am an extremist. And so I was like, I said, I fasted and did so much penance and mortification that it took the joy from Christmas. We were talking about that.
Speaker: And she's like, this is the beautiful both and of Catholicism. We talk about that a lot in Catholicism and that we can do fasting and penance and feel joyful anticipation. And this is where she really got me. She said, this is like being 38 weeks pregnant.
Speaker: So, you know what that feels like, right? Oh, that is the perfect analogy. Right? There's lots of discomfort. You're not feeling the best, but we're so excited for what's to come. And how amazing, again, Mother Church and her wisdom is that we can just lean on our blessed mother and just really align ourselves with her as she's physically pregnant and waiting for the baby to come.
Speaker: And now that I can think about it like that, that really does help me kind of have a more balanced approach to it. Right. And even just the concept of having an increased desire to prepare for Christmas as you go about your day is in a way its own little prayer.
Speaker: and anticipation of Christmas, right? So as you go about the day and you're like, oh, I just, I really want to be ready for the coming of Jesus. I really want to prepare my heart. Well that, if you direct it towards God, that's preparation. Because it's His grace ultimately that prepares our hearts and converts hearts, right? So it's not meant to solely rest on our shoulders alone.
Speaker: Now, the church is filled with great mini little feasts and things that happen leading up until Christmas that I'd love to talk about, you know, and there's just some really fun things that we can do in the middle of all that and make some memories with our kids. But one of the things you and I talked about before we started recording is how important it is that we're not just making memories for our kids during the season because we can drive ourselves batty trying to do that.
Speaker: and we can be the stressed out, miserable mom doing everything we can to make Christmas magical for the children, right? So it's about making memories that we can feel good about too and that we can enjoy because I want to look back at the photos and I want to have good memories of that and not just knowing that I was running around like a crazy person. So
Speaker: Here's some of the fun things that the church has incorporated into this Advent season that lead up to Christmas. And one of the greatest ones that I've noticed a huge resurgence in over the last couple of years. And this is something that they've always done in Germany and in some European countries, but we're just really starting to do here in Canada and the U .S. is St. Nicholas Day, right? The Feast of St. Nicholas.
Speaker: He was a fourth -century bishop of Myra, and one of the stories about him is that he was walking by someone's home, and he saw stockings drying by a fire hanging with care. And he knew that these stockings belonged to three young maidens who were destitute and were likely going to have to turn towards being prostitutes. This took a dark turn. That's what the Catholic Church always does.
Speaker: Look at all these great stories and then they take a dark turn. And so he tossed into an open window three bags of gold and they went into each of these stockings that were hanging by the chimney, right? And so this is kind of the idea of where St. Nicholas
Speaker: perhaps where the money or the gift of gold coins in the shoes came from. And I don't know if you're dumb like me, but it took me many years to realize St. Nicholas sounds like Santa Claus, which is where Santa Claus' name comes from. It took a while, but I got there.
Speaker: Yes. Yeah, we love celebrating St. Nicholas's feast day. I suppose we should have a bit of a disclaimer that we're going to just be discussing for a moment about how we celebrate St. Nicholas's feast day. So if, you know, if listening to the Modern Lady podcast is a family affair, we'll give you a moment to maybe pause. Right. But this is a great example in our family anyways of taking
Speaker: One, we cannot do all of the church's little feast days throughout Advent. But for St. Nicholas's feast day, I really latched upon this idea. We really like to read together in our families.
Speaker: And it had been on my mind and on my heart to develop this basket of Christmas books, Christmas reads. And so it was a great opportunity I saw when my kids were little to teach them about the saints, about St. Nicholas, about his story, and have them do something fun that kind of cements the lesson, so the act of them putting out their shoes.
Speaker: on like a random night in December and anticipating getting a little treat. And then often St. Nicholas will bring a Christmas story, you know, along with some chocolate coins for everyone to share together to anticipate. And St. Nicholas is so wonderful. He always leaves a little note for the children saying that he just breezed by on his way from Mass on his feast day.
Speaker: And he wanted to thank the children for thinking of him on his feast day and that he will be sure to catch them again at Christmas time. Oh, that's wonderful. Well, yeah. I love the news.
Speaker: Yeah, St. Nicholas is a great guy. But it, you know, this is the creativity that we're talking about, right? There are other feast days that just kind of go by for our family. We don't do much for them. But to figure out which ones fit with you. The church has so many opportunities because all her children and all the families are so different. That's right.
Speaker: So many of the moms are really starting to pull this one together and enjoying it and I know at first I remember the first year I did it I thought oh, okay now we're spending money again like right before Christmas happened and It's like a mini Christmas, but it is wonderful and so a lot of moms are really creative with the fact that they do something like you said at a book to their Christmas book collection or some give up puzzles or perhaps it's the one new board game that the kids get for the year and
Speaker: One mom gave her kids flannel sheets on St. Nicholas's feast day, which I really liked that idea as well. And so I know it's just this really exciting thing that my kids will certainly remember waking up and having their shoes out and getting something. So that's a fun one. Another big feast day is St. Lucie, right?
Speaker: Yes. Oh my gosh. So awesome. And a lot, again, it's really growing in devotion here in Canada and the United States. This is a big one in Sweden. I don't even know how much they attach it to the actual Catholic Church at this point in Sweden, but it is a massive festival there. But for us here, again, we'll go a little dark because, again, hashtag Catholic.
Speaker: So St. Lucie carries her eyeballs on a platter. Yeah, as you do. And we like to, you know, play up on that. That's a good theme. You think, hey, what can we do for a theme, for a party? What can we include our children with? Right. Let's take like cinnamon buns or like a baked good and make it into eyeballs on a platter.
Speaker: And have our oldest daughter carry it around to all her siblings in bed. That's correct. And if we're really gutsy, we'll put a wreath on our oldest daughter's head with candles that will light with actual fire.
Speaker: Do you know what? I don't know how people can say Catholicism is boring. You know what's in my notes right here in capitals? Catholicism is so cool. It is so neat and I think that that is the pull to go back to our very first point is why sometimes we get overwhelmed because we just simply think it's so cool.
Speaker: And we want to do it all. That's exactly it. Yeah. The more we learn, right? Because we weren't really taught a lot of these things. And so our generation is kind of scrambling to learn about this. But then like we're saying everything we learn, we're like, how do people stop doing this? This is amazing. And you know, maybe there was exhausted 18th century moms that were like, I'm so done with St. Lucie.
Speaker: So it felt a lot of habit. They didn't have Pinterest, so they didn't know other options. But I mean, we also have Our Lady of Guadalupe. You can do like a taco night. Like this actual Mexican feast night leading up to Christmas, thanks to Our Lady of Guadalupe. Yeah, there's just so many interesting things to do. Now, one of these things to kind of go with the Feast of St. Lucie, which is a tradition that I absolutely adore, but have never
Speaker: gotten to and done in our own lives. To go along with that is the tradition of the Jesse tree.
Speaker: Right. To do the Jessie Tree with the kids. I've always loved the idea of doing a Jessie Tree, but I forget about it every year until like the first day of Advent. And even Kendra Tierney, try as she might, and she does. She can't help this hopeless, this hopeless woman here, because she wrote a post, I remember it was like the three levels or something of Jessie Trees. And she had like the hardest way, the medium way, and then
Speaker: I don't even qualify, which I don't even qualify for. Actually, I think she called it the, um, Advent starts tomorrow. Right. Um, but I'm, I'm always like Advent started yesterday. So needless to say, I have not jumped on the Jesse tree, but do you guys do Jesse trees? I've tried a couple of years. So one year I tried.
Speaker: I tried making, making the ornaments from scratch, like those salt dough ornaments. I don't do crafts, Michelle. I don't do crafts people. Like I, so I started, right? I was like, Hey kids, we're going to do that. Everything all set out. It's rolling out the dough. I made like three. The kids were like, these look awful. I was like trying to poke the hole through them with a pencil. You could barely tell what the misshapen mass of whiteness was.
Speaker: And I'm like, forget it, forget it. So that year we stopped, I threw them all out. Second year, I'm like, okay, I'm good with scissors and like construction paper. And like, I got a little bundle of sticks from the garden for the one that needs the bundle of sticks. I made about seven, so I got further, right? So I'd only made three the first year and then threw them out. I got to about seven and then threw them out the second year. Last year, I didn't even try, but this year I just ordered from Amazon, like half hour before we started recording. Anne Voskamp, or however you say her last name,
Speaker: She actually lives near us. Did you know that? She's like, I think I did know that. Huge in the Christian world. It's like a pop -up Christmas tree book that you open and it's beautiful and the tree pops up and it has like the advent calendar little doors all around it that's reusable and it has the ornaments and the little doors.
Speaker: and then you can hang them on the little tree. So I can't screw this up. It doesn't get easier than that. Aside from, there's a cute one that you can put on your fridge with magnets, which I don't have a magnetized fridge, so I can't do that one. Okay. And then if that doesn't work, maybe this just isn't the tradition for us.
Speaker: That's right. Now, people might be saying, what is a Jesse tree? And so I got this information from CatholicCulture .org, but it comes from the spot in Isaiah where it says, But a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom. And so
Speaker: It is a popular devotion that really didn't start until the 1950s. It's a relatively new one. And it's this idea of having a tree, so like the Christmas tree. And then it goes through the types of Christ, the genealogy of Christ, and the symbols of salvation history. And it can go between 21 to 28 days. There's just a lot of leeway with the Jesse tree. But it's just this idea of explaining how we got to, from Adam to Christ,
Speaker: and hanging these ornaments every day with our kids. So it's a great idea. And the people who've done it and made homemade or homemade ornaments, I just, it blows me away every year. So it's something that I still desire to do, but I'm done beating myself up a bit that I can't do it right now. Yeah, I think I'm the same way. You know what I think I mentioned before that leading up to Advent, we are like, there are so many family birthdays in November. And so Advent, I've
Speaker: kind of started to accept that it is very much a season that I'm going to have to figure out ways to practice it, um, without carving out any more special time to do something. Right. And the Jesse tree, I know, um, I just simply don't know when exactly we would do it when for it to be consistent in our house. But I do really, really love the salvation history as a means to prepare yourself. Like, yeah, it's like timing the reading of a novel up to the day.
Speaker: in the book where the actual characters are celebrating what you're leading up to. One of the moms that I spoke with, they do their Jesse tree in the morning with breakfast. They just put the ornament on in the morning and they do their advent wreath at night. So they
Speaker: they do both and it's just the kind of the routine that they've gotten into and so it becomes their habit. Now speaking of the Advent wreath, this is I think something that most Catholic families do. This is something that my family did regularly even though we only attended mass Christmas and Easter when I was growing up. We always had an Advent wreath. My parents lit the candles. We even did some readings and I'm very happy to use my maternal grandmother's Advent wreath
Speaker: And it's something that we do light every night with dinner, but then every Sunday we do the scripture readings and that sort of thing. So that's something that I feel like if you can't do anything else, just even lighting the candles helps our children understand that this is its own special liturgical period that's different than Christmas. Right. And actually.
Speaker: So we do our Advent wreath in the mornings and that's how we keep it consistent because we always need to have breakfast before school. And so while they eat breakfast, it's an Advent tradition for us as we keep the lights off and we light the Advent wreath on the kitchen table. We'll move it in from the dining room. And like you said, it's just for myself, for the kids, it's a bit of a place marker for what season we're in.
Speaker: And that's the time when it suits us best, but we're doing it. And that's a really important point. Yeah. I have a couple of devotional books that I do turn to towards Advent, but my absolute favorite one is written by a German Catholic priest. And he had a special devotion to Advent. And I guess he was actually pretty well known for his homilies during that period. People would travel to his church to hear his homilies during Advent.
Speaker: His name was Father Alfred Delp, and he was imprisoned. He was arrested by the Nazis during World War II for being a Catholic priest, and he was in prison pretty much on death row. He knew he was going to die during an event of 1944.
Speaker: And he continued to write about Advent as like a homily, right? But only sentence by sentence. And he would smuggle out these tiny pieces of paper with sympathetic jailers and people that would come to see him. And they would compile these back together and be able to share his message of hope of Advent from his jail.
Speaker: And you can feel when you're reading his writings, this is very, very powerful because while we're preparing our own hearts to kind of encounter the baby Jesus at Christmas with joy, this priest is writing this, knowing full well he is also going to be encountering our Lord, but face to face in his judgment very soon because he knew his death was imminent.
Speaker: And so it's talking about preparing your heart to meet Jesus. Well, our Advent preparations are nothing like what he was feeling. And so his insight into that is very powerful. And so sure enough, Father Delp was killed in February of 1945, right after that Advent. And so his book, we can put a link to it in the notes, is my absolute favorite one to read during that period.
Speaker: Oh my goodness. I've seen you share it before on Instagram, but I didn't know his story. And now I really have to hurry and hope Amazon Prime can get it to me for the start of Advent. I actually hadn't picked my spiritual reading for Advent yet. And I also like you being a reader. That is one of the ways I do enjoy preparing for Advent. So yeah, I think I'm going to look into Father Delp. That's awesome. Do you have a recommendation of something you love?
Speaker: Um, yeah, oh, it feels like our what we're loving this week segment, but we're not there yet. No, we have one of those too, but this is the Advent edition. Um, yeah, actually, you know what, I do a lot of music because there is a lot of, um, hustle and bustle happening. And so I find, even if I can't read, I can listen to music and I really love to, um, go into Advent hymns.
Speaker: You know, they're hymns that actually sometimes they kind of get swept into being considered as Christmas songs, some of them, but the message in them is one of like longing or desire or waiting for Christ.
Speaker: So one of them, I remember singing it in our Christmas pageant when we were kids and it was, wait for the Lord. And it's only that like those two lines, wait for the Lord, his day is near, wait for the Lord, be strong, take heart. And you kind of repeat it over and over. It's almost like a chant. So it's meditative when you repeat it over and over in song.
Speaker: Okamokam Emmanuel is one of my favorites, especially when it's sung, I find like acapella and in a church, just the echo. And of course, like Advent at Ephesus, which is a collection of traditional Advent hymns. They're sung by the nuns, the Benedictines of Mary and Queen of the Apostles.
Speaker: So I mean, you want to talk about atmospheric advent, you go find that one on you know that album and put it on in the evening with your advent reef lit. Oh my goodness, it's like shivers it really puts you in this.
Speaker: this frame of contemplation and preparation. And also, just as a final note, I do have on my Advent playlist on Spotify, Oh Holy Night, which I know is more about what's happening on Christmas Day, but I've always felt like when I listen to it during Advent, it heightens
Speaker: my anticipation and my desire because of the emotion in the song. And just that admonition of, you know, fall on your knees. Like it actually brings me to tears when I hear it. It makes me long so much for Jesus and for Christmas to come. So music as well can really set a tone for yourself interiorly. And then if you're playing it on a speaker for your whole house,
Speaker: it kind of puts this piece over the entire household too. So Advent wraps up with this other devotion called Oh Antiphons, which is another thing I've tried the last couple of years and fail miserably at. Have you ever tried that one, Michelle? Yep, I think I've only gotten
Speaker: through the first few as well. Maybe this year, it always comes. That's right. So for our listeners, these are verses that are sung or prayed from December 17th until the 23rd. It's the Octave of Christmas. Now that's only seven days, and then the eighth day of that octave being Christmas Eve. And these are the titles of the Messiah.
Speaker: And these are taken from the book of Isaiah again, and that foretell of his coming. And so it's like, oh Sapientia, which is oh wisdom, and a bunch of his, I don't have them all listed here, but you kind of meditate on those as it's starting to build towards Christmas Eve. And again, like these are just amazing chances and gifts that the church has given us during this period to help ready ourselves for that Christmas day.
Speaker: And in my house, I have seen nothing wrong with doing these ancient traditions and trying my absolute best at them that are very Catholic, right? Living that otherworldly, very deeply Catholic sense in our domestic church. And at the same time popping on the Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra albums and living up that kind of life as well and making a few Christmas cocktails and decorating. And so like everything we've always tried to say on this podcast,
Speaker: really discern what your family is at this time of the year, what you need. Maybe you have a new baby and the days are long and dark and you just want that tree up because you need that beauty as you're sitting nursing your baby for 12 hours a day. You know what? We just came through that really long home renovation. All we want, because our house was in such disorder, is our tree up because we want to see it with the new Christmas. And it's not going to take away from the seriousness of that devotion of reading what Father Alfred Delp wrote.
Speaker: or the antiphons, it's not going to detract from that. I think we can do both of those things together, but that's just where I'm at this year, and maybe it'll be different again next year. Right, and it's coming back to what you said earlier in the episode of the both and nature of Catholicism, right? We are in the world, we are not of the world.
Speaker: but we are called to live in wherever place in history God has put us, but to carry His light and that joy and the peace that He has given us into the world wherever we're at.
Speaker: Okay, it's time for our What We're Loving This Week segment of the show. So Lindsay, what have you been loving this week? I'm sure you've noticed this, but one of our favorite shows that you and I both love is back with season four. Do you know which show I'm talking about?
Speaker: Oh no. It wasn't widely advertised, so you might not have seen that it's back. I don't think I know. Not season four. Is it Man in the High Castle? Yes! Oh my gosh, that's the only show I can think of that was missing in season four. No way! I didn't know
Speaker: The best yep, so I have I know we've talked about this show before but it's Jason and I have been staying up till 1 a .m. Watching it So it is what I'm loving this week. It's it's the final season of the series like the series is done. Oh my everything Everything is happening Michelle. It's so good
Speaker: Um, so for our listeners, if you have not checked out the man in the high castle on Amazon prime, you are missing out. Yeah. There's the, honestly, there's a few things that, you know, we don't agree with, but 99 % of it's actually really well done. And so to be able to watch a show that is well written, well acted, well produced, a brilliant storyline,
Speaker: and not have to turn it off because it's absolutely filled with filth yeah again there's there's not good stuff in all of it but it's not as bad as it could be it's just a really really really well written show and so season four just debuted last week and i can't wait till you and phil catch up oh my gosh why why do they do this to us because we've already been struggling with season three of the crown
Speaker: Right? Because what I'm loving this week, we'll get to in a minute, is a TV series we're currently watching. But we picked it because none of these other shows came out with their next seasons yet. It was supposed to be our bookmark show that's taking too long and now, oh my goodness. I know and we'll have to talk about the crown next, because I haven't started the crown yet either. Me neither. So that will be next week.
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's it's I'm really happy that they both shows were released at the same time. But now tell me what your bookmark show is. Okay, so my bookmark show, which we are really enjoying is designated survivor. Oh, and it's on Netflix. Have you heard about it? I have heard about it. Yep.
Speaker: Yeah, so we're about halfway through season one. So I'm hoping it checks out, but it's so far so good. It stars Key for Sutherland. He's playing Key for Sutherland. I'm just kidding. I'm joking. He does seem to fall in similar roles, but actually he does a great job playing a character who's not quite as brash or headstrong as Jack Bauer. So the synopsis is basically that whenever major political events happen in the States,
Speaker: where all of Congress or senior members of government are together, they designate one survivor to be somewhere else off site in case anything happens and then the leadership of the country can continue. So from Netflix now, the synopsis says, quote, America's fate rests in the hands of a low level official after an attack on Washington decimates the government in this gripping political thriller, end quote.
Speaker: Very cool, so it is fast paced, but well developed. Much like 24, I keep watching the episodes and thinking, wow, only like in the show, only about like two days has passed. I feel like I've been watching this for days.
Speaker: So yeah, likable characters, situations are kind of relatable to current events that are happening today in the world. So it's a great bookmark show, but it's not a brand new show and it is on Netflix. So if you need to watch the other ones first, it will be there for after.
Speaker: Okay that's going to do it for us this week and if you want to get in touch and chat with us about our topic today you can find us on our website www .themodernlady1950 .wordpress .com or leave us a comment on Facebook or Instagram where you can find us at the Modern Lady podcast. I'm Michelle Sacks and you can find me on Instagram at mmsacks.
Speaker: And I'm Lindsay Murray and you can find me on Instagram at Lindsay Hillmaker. Thank you so much for listening. Have a great week and we will see you next time.
